I'm afraid I have some bad news. A phone reset wiped out my powered-up DQVI save. That's right, my level 13 overleveled character has poofed. So I had to start over, and this time I brought back the old DQIII Buffy motif and went with Spike. (Had a perfect chance here to go with Serge and didn't)
This isn't the worst thing in the world, because I wasn't that far into the game. I went ahead and overleveled again, and this time I was out for REVENGE. Overleveling like this with one character: Kind of dumb? Yeah.
Oh boy. And it only gets worse from there. With enemies at this stage topping out at about 60 EXP for a fight, it starts to take excessively long times to level after 12-15. Of course, like I said, there's NO REASON to do this. The (difficult) early parts of the game are rendered moot by like level 8 at the most.
Still went ahead and broke my level 13 record from before by going all the way to level 20. What the hell is wrong with me? I blame plane and train rides.
Spell lineup is surprisingly barren at level 20. The only additional combat spell is Sap. I'm guessing the lack of spells is because most of them are being saved for the class system later on in the game. This game handles classes a bit differently than DQIII and you aren't really free to grind your skills up until WELL into this game.
The best equipment available at this point. Time to basically roll the game...at least for a few hours. Yeah, new characters won't be leveled-up, but I can rely on Spike to carry things.
Wait, what have we got here?
The most fearsome of brawlers, too.
The story ends here, so we'll need to find Part 2 to find out what his catastrophic defeat was. ..."cat"astrophic, heh
This guy has a very important job: Make the tower seem more menacing when the King sends would-be troops here on a mission.
You run into the other Potentials as you climb the tower. Most of them are wildly incompetent, like this lady who is perplexed by a dead end. "HOW DO MOVE THROUGH WALL?" she harks.
Here's another Potential, stuck on a damage-floor. "HOW DO BACKTRACK?"
The only other Potential worth a damn is Carver, the muscle-head of the game. He's a BIG BEEFY LAD, and also a likeable character to boot. (This is Hassan in the SFC version)
NO! I DON'T NEED TO BULK UP! LET ME THROUGH!
The first boss of the game is "Double G" Geoff Garrett. This fight is easy, especially with my levels being 3x what they need to be. If you lose here, Carver ends up winning the competition and everything just sort of continues.
Here's a shot from the DS version of the game. While the phone version is nice and HD and has everything else the DS version has, I have to say with the phone versions I'm REALLY missing the character face-sprites being visible in battle (specifically in 4, 5, and 6). There was zero reason not to include them. I mean yeah, you have microscopic images on top of the screen of each character, but it isn't the same. A completely unnecessary downgrade.
After all of that, Spike finally gets promoted. He is now...Private Spike.
After that I just sorta wander around for a few minutes until I find this guy who is the proud owner of a wagon. However, he is too old and slow to pull the wagon himself.
So I need to find a horse...a horse with no wagon.
If I can do that, he'll give our hero the wagon. He also makes sure to add that the wagon contains a king-sized bed and a yoga-swing. He also does large exaggerated winking at the hero while saying this. I don't know why any of this is important.
Leave the town and Carver chases after, which gets us our second party member. He informs us that wrangling a horse ain't no simple task.
Luckily, in some circles he is known as... Durango Carver.
DURANGO CARVER.
::Carver leans down and inspects a turd:: "Yep. That there horse is right up this way, son."
The Horse With No Wagon appears!
"Stand back, this is a job for a seasoned pro" says Carver before being SUPERKICKED BY THE HORSE.
After returning from the Local Medical Facility, our heroes finally corner the horse.
"No sir, I don't like it" says Peggy Sue.
Hauling the horse back to Somnia Castle puts the guards on edge.
This guy then hooks us up with the wagon. Now we can switch characters on the overworld and recruit more people. ...except we're nowhere near even having a full party, and you can't recruit monsters in this game. Well, at least we're prepared for later.
This also gets us another promotion! We are now Private Spike and Private Carver.
...these names sound painful.
King Somnus Himself gives us our next mission: Find Ra's Mirror. I bet he's actually a monster and wants us to bring him the mirror so he can destroy it and continue to pose as the king. I'm so jaded now.
"If you succeed at THIS...then we'll send you to retrieve crystals from this town of mages that stole them. And after that, we'll send you to drop off a super-cool Mystery Package at another town. Then we'll give you the REALLY important missions, like riding mechs through a snow field to pick up a relic from a mining town. Maybe after that we'll send you to demolish a dangerous city pillar for us."
Well, these guys seem pretty reputable! Glad to be on board!
Speaking of big, Carver and Spike are the Big Mang and the Medium-Sized Mang, like Nash and Hall.
At this point I need to go back to the Ghost World...which is the Real World, I think? Which means the one I started in is the Dream World.
People can only faintly hear us, and I think we might be able to move things.
Our heroes stumble upon a nefarious maid, seen here concocting poison. Of course, she can't see us. Quick, we've gotta tell Sam Beckett! ...wait, we don't have one.
Looks like this woman is overcome with jealousy for the village stud, Johan, so she's going to KILL her competition, Ella. Which is Spanish for "She" and it's pronounced "Aya"
"She's so hot" = "Ella es tan caliente" which is what I said while I watched a young Salma Hayek cause traffic accidents in Desperado.
Why is it impossible? What's wrong with you?
"With those...rippling muscles, digging trenches for hours with all that stamina"
Carver and Spike's ghosts glance at each other and quietly back out of the room as Ella goes off to satisfy herself.
Unfortunately things take an even lamer turn when Ivy's poison meant for Ella ends up in the food bowl of the mayor's beloved dog, Mr. Barkington.
Mr. Barkington clearly isn't feeling well, so the mayor calls for the town priest (the ambulance of the Dragon Quest Universe)
Luckily the priest knows Kazing and was able to get the dog back on his feet. If he'd had to waste 7 or 8 turns casting Zing like I've had to do a few times in these games so far, it would have been too late.
Ella gets framed for the crime, since she's the one who fed Mr. Barkington.
...wait a minute, maybe it wasn't an accident. Maybe Ivy's plan wasn't to poison Ella, but to frame Ella. This also deflects any potential investigation from coming her way, since the authorities would assume the case was solved.
We need to get out of ghost-form so we can tell the mayor what's really going on. Thankfully, this Random Blonde can see us. ...Sam?
No, the Random Blonde in question is none other than Milly, our third party member and a noted dancer. Also she can see ghosts. That's about all the development we get for her for a while.
Maybe those young fools are just tired! GAWD!
Madame Luca sends our heroes to find her some dew, then she'll get them out of ghost form. Then, people will be able to see them and they can warn the mayor of the treacherous Ivy.
Shh, be very quiet. Here we have a rare moment of observing Slime and Babble co-existing in the wild.
Truly, this is nature at its most magica- wait, what are they doing? Oh My God! Are they mating??
Well, now we know how those grotesque Spotted Slimes happened.
First Metal Slime. The fleeing rate seems even higher than previous games, as does the miss rate. I don't think we even scratched one of these in the entire dungeon.
At the end of the dungeon, we find the dew...and a demon that is apparently drunk on it.
Wot
This thing has a giant mouth, like all of those weird creepypasta demons you see everywhere online. This is supposed to be a formidable foe, but again, we breeze through it thanks to Spike being a ringer.
With this, Madame Luca cures us of the ghost affliction, and it's back to the town to solve this dilemma.
...but first, construction workers whistle at Milly! You back off, scoundrel!
"How high are we talking?" says Milly before proceeding to slip the guy her number.
WOT
I'm in a hurry to get out of here before Milly gets hit on by any more random dudes, but first we have to finish dealing with the problems here.
Ever try taking an attractive lady out to a bar or club? It's like a damn escort mission fraught with peril. And by peril I mean random dudes popping up every time you look away for 10 seconds.
This means explaining to Johan what really happened with the poison. He knew all along that Ella wasn't guilty. Unfortunately she already took off to become a traveling merchant, exiled to the hills like Connor Macleod. I'd have left too if people showed so little trust.
We arrive at Somnia, which is full of political unrest and people angry at the state of things. She has a point here.
Also, this is a different Somnia from the one earlier. This one is Real World Somnia and that one was Dream World Somnia, I believe. ...or... ya know, I can't keep any of this straight. Pretty sure the Dream World is the one where we weren't ghosts, the Real World is the one where we were ghosts. Now we aren't ghosts in either one. IDK man. I'm just reacting as I go here.
I warp back to the Real World (at least, I think it is...if my home world is the Dream World?)
Here are the ruins of Alltrades Abbey, the home of class changing. Since they're in ruins, it'll probably take some work to get it restored to working order. Unless we're just gonna go to the Alltrades Abbey in the other world.
At this point I'm really not liking the dual worlds. In Chrono Cross this was a cool idea and it worked out somewhat well. Even then I could see where people would have issues with it, like how similar the worlds looked. Here, it's way worse. I can't really tell the two worlds apart AT ALL without casting Zoom, since each world has a different location list. Ideally they should have had different color schemes or something. Maybe a purple sky/landscape in one world and a normal sky/landscape in the other world. I don't know.
As it is, I'm just confused half the time when they tell me to go somewhere. In any case, there's a quick sidequest I can do here to get 5000 G, and even though I'm swimming in G already, I didn't get that way by passing up opportunities. Let's go.
"Are there...My God! Are there vagrants on the premises?" says the mayor while reaching for his cane. "I'll give them a proper thrashing!"
"I'll bet it was those dastardly Chinamen that did it! Beware the Yellow Menace from the Orient!"
Alright dude, I need to get going. You stay here where you can't do any damage.
Turns out Cynthia was kidnapped by these two buffoons at a shack up north. Of course, the game gives me zero clue where to go here and you can walk in any direction from the town, so I just wandered around the world map until I happened to find the shack. And...they want this boatload of money.
Miniboss fight! These guys are pretty easy to defeat. While Bigg is more menacing-looking, it's important to concentrate fire on Liddle, since he can heal - in addition to having an impressive rack.
If this were a Final Fantasy game, this would be a good spot for Biggs and Wedge.
After knocking them around, they run for the hills. Our heroes give them a righteous boot to the ass on the way out.
Cynthia is all tied-up and muffled. After freeing her, she angrily reveals that they were role-playing. "I HIRED them, you ass! I wanted to get out and get my rocks off! YOU try having any fun with my dad around! And furthermore, you have NO IDEA what a turn-on being tied up is! It's like a monsoon downstairs, let me tell you! Maybe next time you'll ASK before you rescue somebody! And furthermore-" ::our heroes quickly put the muffle back on::
Her dad then arrives to retrieve her (after giving me 5,000 G for "paying the ransom" I didn't pay - you can get other rewards for different choices, but I want money. As dishonorable of a choice as that was, there are no repercussions)
"HMMPHMRRF" muffles Cynthia, staring daggers at our heroes as they leave.
Well then.
This isn't caught up to where the SFC version is yet so more later before I switch back. Will probably switch whenever one or the other gets too far ahead. Going to be in-depth with the remake and more surface-level with the SFC version. Should be a good time.
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